Among a number of distinguished roles, including Vronsky in an adaptation
of Anna Karenina and Hotspur in The Age of Kings, Connery played the
demanding lead role of the derelict boxer in a live BBC version of Rod
Serling's Requiem for a Heavyweight (1957), a role created by Jack Palance
in one of the key plays of American live television drama.
The James Bond franchiese however, made Connery a star, and the association
was so strong that he could have been trapped in the part. Always unpretentious
as an actor, he seemed destined to play interesting variations on the
theme of sardonic sexuality. What is remarkable, however, is the increasing
depth that his basic persona has acquired with age. Always good to look
at, with enough irony to translate good looks into playful sexual danger,
his later screen presence has developed the contours of a landscape
embedded with history. Since Robin and Marian (1976), and increasingly
in films like Highlander (1986), The Name of the Rose (1986),
The Untouchables (1987) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989).
